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Comment by iterance | Hacker News Reader

Following the analogy... you're on an island. A ferry has showed up at the island every six months or so for the last 40 years. The last ferry that showed up broke before it could leave the harbor. No need to worry, though. Another ferry's coming in six months and there are plenty of supplies on the island.

Is it rescue? Maybe in the sense that you can't leave when you wanted to and now you have to wait. But not in the sense that you were ever in any real danger.

(Admittedly, maybe there is a bit more danger for these astronauts because a malfunctioning spacecraft is inherently a bit of a safety hazard. And the SpaceX operation is certainly not as routine as a ferry showing up at a dock, though it's still safe.)

It seems that it is both a bit subjective whether one calls it "rescue," and also a bit sensationalized to put in a headline too.

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Maybe this is better:

Cruise line A and cruise line B drop their passengers off at a remote island for 5 days, and then come to pick them up and take them home. After cruise line B drops theirs off, the cruise ships breaks down, and the passengers can't be picked up after 5 days, so they're stuck on the island with no immediate way to get off. Cruise line A says "OK, the next cruise ship we send will be at half capacity, so we can get the passengers from cruise line B off the island and get them home."

Is cruise line A rescuing the passengers from cruise line B? I'd say yes.

> Is cruise line A rescuing the passengers from cruise line B? I'd say yes.

IMO that's only true in line A's PR campaign, assuming they're adversarial enough to run with it.

In your analogy, the passengers are always "stuck on the island with no immediate way to get off" for at least 5 days, as they have no alternative way to get back during their planned stay. If B's cruise ship breaks down - and AFAIK in this case, "breaks down" doesn't mean the ship can't move, just that the risk of catastrophic failure during the trip crossed a preset threshold - that's more of an operational disruption. The stranded passengers are still safe and sound, they just need to wait for the next scheduled cruise to take them home.

The schedule bit matters IMO. It would be a rescue if the next scheduled ride would be way too late to help them and thus it had to be moved up to save their lives.

Cruise passengers stuck on an island without other transport would be rescued because personally for them it is completely out of ordinary.

Workers who signed up to get paid to be on the island and do some work? Knowing that there is only one line of transport and it can be irregular? Going through months or years of training beforehand? Maybe "rescue" is a sensationalization when used in a news headline.

The main reason people don’t want to call it a rescue is because they dislike Musk. If there were no politics involved people wouldn’t be handwringing themselves so much over the word rescue.

If the spaceship that took you somewhere wasn’t able to get you back as planned and cannot get you back as planned and someone else has to go get those people, that’s a rescue.

> If the spaceship that took you somewhere wasn’t able to get you back as planned and cannot get you back as planned and someone else has to go get those people, that’s a rescue.

If you were on cruise then yes, if you are a professional team who trained for years to stay in dangerous conditions and the only thing out of ordinary is delayed transport back then not. If politics were not involved no one would call it a rescue.

Seems like similar things in the past were called rescues: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/science/russia-launches-res...

Good point. If this situation is equivalent then why not I guess. But note the PBS one says "urgent need for the capsule". Unclear why. Is it urgent in this case?

In case of Russians there was a coolant leak

If you are working in Antarctica and need to wait for another transport home it sounds okay. If you urgently need treatment and must perform a surgery on yourself then that's an emergency

> In case of Russians there was a coolant leak

Starliner’s manoeuvring thrusters weren’t working!

They really hate that Elon is actually sending a ~~submarine~~ capsule to get people stranded in a ~~cave~~ metal tube.

It's slightly more nuanced than that, in that starliner didn't actually break down. It had some issues which presented increased risk for the astronauts, but it was still operational. If there was a true emergency on ISS, they would've gone on starliner. But because there was no danger of them staying longer till the next ride, they opted out of using starliner given the increased risk.

> It had some issues which presented increased risk for the astronauts, but it was still operational

We didn’t know that!

> because there was no danger of them staying longer till the next ride

I suppose it’s a step forward that we’ve normalised the baseline dangers (and costs, personal and financial) of being in space.

If you took a different boat separate from the normal ferry, intending to leave right away but now stuck unable to use it, I would say the next ferry is rescuing you.

No? Because if you’re not in danger, you’re not being rescued. You’re just being transported.

If I miss the last train across the bay, my uber isn’t rescuing me. I can always stay up to 5am by making a shady deal at the endup.

But yeah, this is a black eye on boeing and definitely something that nobody wants to have to deal with.

> if you’re not in danger, you’re not being rescued. You’re just being transported

The ISS isn’t Treasure Island. There is always an elevated degree of peril. Particularly in an emergency condition.

But there's no emergency situation at the moment.

> there’s no emergency situation at the moment

It’s space. The ground state is emergency. I am training to be a pilot. Anything going off flight plan is an emergency. If ground control gives me corrective instructions, in the course of a mistake, I hope I will have the humility to not refuse its designation as a rescue.

Like, if you want an Exhibit A for why Boeing doesn’t deserve forward trust, it’s this response.

When the ground state is emergency the definition of emergency changes because emergency cannot be the same as ground state...

If we go by technical definition of "emergency" then anything not by the plan is an emergency, but it's not used that way normally and it's not a technical publication.

If you are stuck in space with no lifeboat back then I agree it is an emergency, but they apparently have Starliner and it works. If they or Nasa are more comfortable with another option maybe that makes it an emergency or maybe not.

If it turns out Starliner doesn't work, that's an emergency. If there is radiation event coming then it's an emergency, but it is always an emergency in space regardless.

> they apparently have Starliner and it works

One, had. Starliner went home. Two, they didn’t. Starliner was broken. Its manoeuvring thrusters, a critical reëntry system, were misbehaving. If you’re on a plane and the oxygen system fails, that’s an emergency. You don’t have to wait for cabin pressure to fail for it to qualify, and oxygen systems aren’t even a critical system; this is closer to the flaps or landing gear behaving erratically.

But the oxygen system is fine, right? Let me check the article again

If it fails then that's an emergency, but that regardless of the presence of the boat.

Noted the absence of Starliner, but not 100% convinced personally

Actually, NASA protocol requires more than a single layer of safety. The astronauts currently do not have a lifeboat home - that is extraordinarily irregular and I believe that it constitutes a danger to the astronauts. The spacecraft are not only for down transport, they are also shelters for radiation and particle events - which could be declared with days or hours notice. For a month these astronauts have had no viable shelter nor transport in case of emergency.

Danger is not when the last later of safety fails. Danger is when the level of risk exceeds a set threshold - and that level has been exceeded as per NASA protocol.

These individuals are professionals who signed up for this and are paid to do the job. This isn’t a rescue; the media is simply sensationalizing the entire story.

> individuals are professionals who signed up for this and are paid to do the job

Is the thesis only leisure travellers can be rescued? Astronauts do not sign up to fly on faulty ships. They accept the risk of it happening. But that acceptance doesn’t diminish the tragedy of a ship breaking up on reëntry nor, by extension, the emergency status of a reëntry vehicle with misbehaving manoeuvring thrusters.

This discussion reminds me of the reaction among some to the FAA grounding Falcon 9 “after the first stage used in the [August] launch crash-landed and toppled into the Atlantic Ocean while attempting to touch down on a SpaceX droneship” [1]. It doesn’t matter that everyone else tosses their spent stages into the sea. There was a plan and it went abnormally. That calls for a review. If that review can’t be concluded satisfactorily, as it wasn’t in the case of Starliner, you have an emergency. Relieving someone from an emergency is a rescue.

By some of the standards raised in this thread, a test pilot ejected from their plane and stranded in the tundra wouldn’t qualify for rescue because they were paid or weren’t in immediate and obvious mortal peril or because the ejection seat worked.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-grounded-faa-cr...

Looked up two definitions of rescue. First, is the default that shows on Google (via Oxford Languages) [1]:

> verb. 1. save (someone) from a dangerous or distressing situation. 2. informal, keep from being lost or abandoned; retrieve.

Per this one, if you miss the last train across the bay the the Uber _would_ indeed be "rescuing" you if you felt distressed. If we consider the informal definition, I'd say you're also being rescued since one could say you were abandoned by the train and thus being retrieved by the Uber. Next, Merriam Webster [2]:

> transitive verb. to free from confinement, danger, or evil

Similarly, if you understand "rescue" as freeing someone from danger, this isn't a rescue. The astronauts aren't in danger really— they have all the supplies and support they need. Nonetheless, they certainly are in confinement, so this could still be called a rescue.

I personally do see how the fact this mission was already scheduled, and the little danger around all this, can make "rescue" feel like a little much. It's the same word used in The Martian, after all. But nonetheless I would still call it a rescue mission. These two astronauts are confined up there not by will but by circumstance, and the taxi flight was modified to sending only two people instead of the usual four, specifically to make space for these two astronauts to come back [3].

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=rescue%20meaning

[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rescue

[3] https://apnews.com/article/boeing-spacex-nasa-astronauts-sta...

If you stay until 5am at the endup, you'll probably have to get rescued anyway.

How is being stranded in space "not in danger"?

> not in the sense that you were ever in any real danger

The analogy breaks down because an island isn’t space. Your default state on an island tends towards remaining alive. Your default state in space is dead.

A closer analogy is a plane in flight. It takes energy and effort to keep everyone alive. Externally-assisted recovery from peril, in that situation, is a rescue. Even if it’s convenient.

No astronaut has died on ISS in 30 years. Claiming they are in significant danger simply isn't accurate. Saying 'the default state in space is dead' when historically basically nobody has died in space.

> No astronaut has died on ISS in 30 years. Claiming they are in significant danger simply isn't accurate

Nobody claimed as much. A jet liner is safer than the ISS. The analogy is conservative.

> Saying 'the default state in space is dead' when historically basically nobody has died in space

Our default state at cruising altitude is dead.

Note: I’m not suggesting anyone would have died. Just that they were in a perilous place where things were going wrong. Being relieved from that position is a rescue.

> A jet liner is safer than the ISS.

Maybe not if the jet is a Boeing though?

To be fair, I'd rather be in a 737 Max at 30,000 ft than without the 737 Max at 30,000 ft.

And I'd rather be with the Starliner at 400 km up than without the Starliner at 400 km up.

But neither seem to be of comparable safety to the other options available.

No speeder has ever died on the highway either. It's only the crashing drivers who died.

It is likewise as foolish to try decoupling the peril of space and the peril of orbit and deorbit.

> Your default state on an island tends towards remaining alive.

I'm guessing you spend most of your life indoors?

On Earth, outside of the carefully regulated homes we've built as a society, the default state is dead and it takes tremendous work and constant vigilence to avoid that fate, only ever temporarily.

And that is why if somebody finds a child wandering in the park alone, we say that the man rescued the child. Exactly as SpaceX is doing in this situation.

Yes and we also say you rescued me if I am bang out of cash and you lend me a fiver at checkout...

If you see a news headline "man rescues child" you expect a direct threat like something like from a burning house.

> if somebody finds a child wandering in the park alone, we say that the man rescued the child. Exactly as SpaceX is doing in this situation.

Plus, saying astronauts, professionals who signed up for the job knowing what it entails and went through years of training are like children wandering in the park, to paint SpaceX as their savior, is... wow.

Humans in space are less than children in the park. We've barely ventured out of our own atmosphere. Less than a 1000 people have been to orbit, and only 24 have gone to the moon. Out of those, only a dozen have landed on the moon.

And the moon is still the Earth system - we've never really left our own yard.

unlike the moon ISS is shielded by magnetic field and receives less radiation. It is actually our yard more than a park

You are invited to stretch the analogy as far as you would like in order to win an internet argument. Have a nice day.

Saying astronauts on ISS are children in the park and saying "rescuing a child" from the park is newsworthy headline is the stretch...

It sounds like everyone in this thread is in complete agreement about the complex parameters and details and yet we are arguing on the scope of the label.

> yet we are arguing on the scope of the label

It’s Saturday, can’t we have a semantic punt?

I’m on the other side of the international date line, you insensitive clod.

That is what is great about HN. We discuss a broad range of topics which sometimes brings us discussing off subject matter but that are still relevant to the heart of HN. Media reporting and how they influence people is definitely a topic appropriate for HN so I can see how it was brought up.

The real problem is that the company doing the rescue is SpaceX, and that's owned by Elon. And HN does not like Elon.

reddit and tv says mars man BAD

ergo mars man BAD

Yes, the comments are a reflection of that. What a level of moral twisting

It's become the normal way of thinking here on HN. Everyone is so deep inside a box that they can't even see the edges. They're brainwashed with cult behavior.

If I can't bikeshed at the office on Saturday, I'll bikeshed on HN on Saturday.

There's plenty of middle managers on HN on the weekends.

Your analogy might (and even that's a stretch ) work for 6 hours not for 6 months!

On an island you can call for a boat or a helicopter. You can relax and eat all your food knowing those options exist.

On a space station your options are considerably more limited.

With SpaceX's launch cadence they could easily shift some flights. Of course you'd need a Crew Dragon that has completed refurbishment, and need to integrate it with a rocket. A month sounds like a reasonable timeline to get an unexpected rescue mission to the ISS. Which isn't great if you need a medevac, but that's why they have enough space craft docked

>On an island you can call for a boat or a helicopter.

Boat, yes; helicopter, no, unless the island is pretty close to civilization. Helicopters have very limited range. No helicopter is going to rescue you from some remote island in the south Pacific, unless it was launched from a rescue ship (in which case it was really the ship that rescued you; the helicopter was merely more convenient for transportation between the ship and the island than a tender boat).

Your analogy is flawed. Starliner has not been in service for 40 years, as in your example.

It’s a fairly new vehicle, newer than the Dragon capsule.

You’re not just “on an island.” You’re LITERALLY STUCK on the island FAR past when you were supposed to leave. So the boat coming to get you off the island is literally rescuing you.

I know you hate Elon musk—I don’t care for him much nor do I harbor animosity towards him—but a rescue is a rescue lmao. You guys would never be this ridiculous if the situation wasn’t politically charged, or if the circumstances favored your political leaning (almost certainly progressive left).

Yeah not a fan of his cause all his big promises / lies like a used car salesman but him buying X and trying to put the brakes on the radical lefts real out there stuff I personally think did just that. He's in the middle / an independent with both conservative & liberal leanings.

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